


Hour of the wolf

by Arabwel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Lydia Martin, Banshee Lydia Martin, Burns, Eye Trauma, F/M, Gore, Lydia-centric, Magic, Rituals, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:51:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5130023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arabwel/pseuds/Arabwel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She closes her eyes and waits.</p><p>He doesn’t show up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hour of the wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jungle_ride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungle_ride/gifts).



> Happy Fall Harvest, jungle_ride! 
> 
> Thanks to my betas C&P for the amazing job <3

She closes her eyes and waits.

He doesn’t show up.

***

Lydia wakes when her alarm goes off, feeling refreshed and not muddy at all. There are no dreams that she can remember, nothing to indicate that she’s done anything but sleep through the night. The circle of mountain ash and salt around her bed lays undisturbed.

Even the sleep-study app on her phone says she hasn't done anything untoward all night, tossing and turning kept to the minimum.

It’s disconcerting, but she is happy. He’s _gone._

He has to be.

***

_“If you look at it, you will go mad!”_

_There is nothing human in Peter’s grin. “Good thing I’m not exactly sane to start with.”_

_Beyond their makeshift barricade, the light of the Lampads’ torch intensifies; soon it will be bright enough to engulf the entire nemeton and turn the beacon into something far more sinister than before._

***

The knife is secure in its sheath, buried in her bedside drawer under diaries that have gone untouched for months, pages slowly yellowing from disuse.

Allison understands; she gives Lydia another one, this one with a supple lavender leather sheath that fits against her ankle like it was made for her.

“It is,” Allison says glumly. There’s bags under her eyes, like she’s been the one haunted by spirits. She’s still reeling from seeing the spectre of her mother, but not as bad as Mr. Argent is, and it’s taking a toll. She wants to reassure them both—it wasn’t real, that it was nothing but an image based on their worst fears—but she can’t, because it... might not have been.

Lydia’s banshee powers have grown so far since Peter first bit her on the field, but it’s just enough to let her know she really doesn’t know jack.

But one thing is for sure.

When he comes back, she’s ready.

*** 

He doesn’t come back. It’s been weeks since she first lay down expecting a visitor in her dreams, and there’s been nothing. Not even the slightest twitch of a curtain out of place, no glimpses at the corner of her eyes.

Lydia wonders if she’s going mad.

***

_He throws himself at the creature with a ferocious snarl. They can’t see what is going on, she can only hear the sounds of impact, of sizzling flesh that carries with it a horrid sweet stench. Everything grows brighter, brighter until even though her eyes are squeezed shut, her hands cover her face, Lydia thinks she’s going blind—_

Everything plunges into darkness.

*** 

Unlike werewolves, banshees get no special marks from death. Not when they witness it, not when they cause it. Lydia is no Lady Macbeth, there’s no damned spot to get out when she washes her hands carefully and rubs lotion on her pale skin.

There wasn’t a lot of blood in the first place.

Her mother worries when she refuses to eat; Lydia doesn’t have the words to explain how she cannot look at the food on her plate, the _meat_ on her plate, and not see something else. Something horrifying. The smell of bacon makes her gag.

She tries to remember, did she feel like this the first time around?

***

_The noise Peter makes is not human, it’s not even animal; it’s a sound of pure pain, and Lydia feels sick to her stomach._

_He shouldn’t be alive. Not even a werewolf should have lived through that. So much worse than a molotov cocktail._

***

What Deaton knows and what Lydia needs to know are two different things. What the bestiaries know—the Argent one she’s painstakingly translated, the Hale files pulled from Peter’s laptop—has a lot more to do with what can be done _to_ her.

Meredith refuses to help. Lydia doesn’t blame her.

***

_Her hands are slick with sweat and the knife slips, nearly clatters to the floor when she pulls it out._

It’s now or never.

***

Chris Argent’s knuckles are white when he hands over the old book. It’s not a bestiary, but it’s—something else. It’s also in medieval French.

Lydia raises a challenging eyebrow and he looks down. “It’s been in the family for a while,” is all that he says before he leaves.

He’s still wearing his wedding ring.

Lydia knows seeing the shade cut him deep. Cut Allison deep, too. They both have shadows in their eyes, the weight of judgement from the dead on their shoulders.

Lydia wants to scream because she is becoming certain it is not true.

***

 _He’s still keening, making that alien sound when he collapses on the dirty floor. Lydia pushes him, swallows the bile rising up in her throat at the feel of the flesh disintegrating like pulled pork under her fingers. His head lolls back and it’s as if he tries to look up at her but_ he has no eyes. _Only charred pits weeping vitreous humor._

_Makes it easier to position the knife and push down._

***

She learns a lot from the book, once she learns to parse the intricacies of dialect and handwriting. But the author, Sabine, is a banshee like her from outskirts of Lyons from the 1610s.

She had been bitten by a wolf, too. Shared a bond with her, until the day the hunters came. The ink is smudged on the last page, a suspicious rusty stain on the edge of the yellowed paper, and Lydia can feel the echoes of what happened.

Lydia thinks she should feel bad, but Sabine's wolf had been a killer. Just like Peter.

The fact that Sabine had hung alongside her is noted by a different hand on the back cover, signed by a M. M. Argent.

That night she dreams of a girl with dark eyes chasing a blonde she-wolf.

But she doesn’t dream about Peter.

***

_She doesn’t know how much time passes between the gross crunching sound and Allison’s hands coming to grip her by the shoulders to pull her away. Everything explodes in sound and cacophony, but Lydia is past caring._

_She sobs into Allison’s shoulder for what seems like hours._

_She did it, she finally did it. She sent him back. She killed him._

_She killed Peter._

***

She learns that not all of what Peter did to her was with predatory intent. That some of it might not have been with intent at all, simply his spirit latching onto hers and her mind giving it a form she could understand.

Not that it mitigates the fact that the bastard bit her in the first place.

Things make a lot more sense after that—from the deadpool to Meredith’s absolute unwillingness to speak to her. She wonders if Meredith shares a bond with Peter, too, - born when their pain ricocheted out of control in each other's minds and souls from their close proximity. 

She is _not jealous_ , dammit. 

It’s a good thing she’s already graduated; she doesn’t have to deal with the memories of his teenage form in the corridors, or worse, see him smirking from the awards cabinet. _For services to the school,_ her mind supplies wryly, but there are limits to the unkindness she can spare him and genocidal maniac is not one of his faults.

Was not one of his faults, dammit.

***

She keeps waking up expecting to see him but he’s not there.

***

_Stiles advocates tossing Peter’s remains in an unmarked hole in the ground, good riddance. But there is no hole deep and dark enough, and no Hale house to bury him under. Not any more. There is no way they can sneak him into the cemetery, to join the rest of his family even with Isaac’s help._

_They bury Peter deep in the woods, far away from the nemeton. Derek carves the triskelion on a tree with his claws in deep, dark grooves. Peter used to come here to be alone, he says quietly. The knowledge of just how his uncle died sits ill with him._

_None of them expect to come back. Least of all, Lydia._

***

The cold moon is full in the sky and Lydia’s breath clouds in the air. She doesn’t need a flashlight in the woods, doesn’t have anyone with her to guide her through the silver-tinged underbrush.

She knows where she is going.

The cuts from Derek’s claws look fresh on the wood even though it’s been months. The earth looks undisturbed, like there’s nothing to say that there is a body underneath. Here lies Peter Hale, an uncle, a father, a murderer and a wolf.

This is nothing like when she brought him back on fragments of knowledge his soul had secreted away, an amalgamation of this and that, of family blood, alpha power and circumstance.

This is personal.

This is her design.

***

She kneels on the dirt and carefully brushes aside the dead leaves and twigs until she reaches the earth itself. It is not grave dirt, but it's close enough, for her to dig her bare fingers into. It’s cold against her palm and she can feel her nails breaking, her manicure being ruined with every inch her hand burrows into the ground.

With her free hand she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small vial of blood. This time, there will be no biting, no fighting. This blood is willingly given, from the daughter who never knew Peter as a father. Never knew him at all.

Lydia closes her eyes and concentrates on breathing deeply as she pours the first vial of blood over her fingers and _pulls._

The very earth shakes around them, the leafless trees rattling and moaning as a wind picks up. She can feel a resistance, a dark void howling at her but she refuses to let go.

Everything rumbles like she’s in the middle of an earthquake and the dry earth starts to crumble outward as if a great shai-hulud is making its way up—only, it's not a worm, there is no spice that flows, it’s a hand that shoots out that grabs her wrist and holds on tight, rotting and skeletal. 

Time for the second vial.

Peter’s claws bite into the tender skin of her wrist hard enough to draw blood even as Lydia throws her head back and lets the still warm blood dribble between her lips. 

Scott was happy to bleed for her when she told him she needed it to sleep at night. To make sure she was not being haunted. No lies detected.

It tastes like lightning and power, salt and iron and magic. She doesn’t swallow, she just holds it in her mouth, holds it as the rumbling and groaning intensifies and the earth beneath her tries to pull _her_ in, pull her to join Peter Hale in his unmarked grave.

After what feels like an eternity passing in a heartbeat the earth shatters around her; pebbles and twigs rain down around her. She stays rooted to the spot, a fulcrum in the chaos as her power slowly but surely levers her quarry from the cold, hard ground.

Her eyes are wide open when they land upon Peter’s sightless face, blackened by death and fire. They are wide open when she leans forward to kiss him, forcing the blood into his lipless mouth.

Her eyes are wide open as she watches life flow back into his bones, the flesh knit itself together and the bright burning blue return to his body with every breath she gives from her lungs, his soul returning piece by piece.

***

Peter Hale returns to life under the beaver moon.

It feels like she can finally breathe as she watches dirt and ash flake away from his skin, watches the muscle and sinew move under his pale skin, made paler by the silver light of the moon.

He lifts her hand to his mouth and licks the rivulets of blood from where his claws pierced her skin. Lydia’s breath catches at the sting, at the _heat_ of it. Despite everything, she still thinks he should be cold, cold like emptiness inside her, cold like the blue of his eyes.

Peter is anything but cold when he leans forward to kiss her again, this time the taste of blood her own and not of someone else’s; her own blood has power, too, but her blood tastes like death.

So does Peter.

“Welcome back,” she whispers when he pulls back, licking his lips, showing her his fangs.

_“I know you missed me.”_

***

She kisses him again, then, and Peter smiles into the kiss. He lets her push him down on the mulled earth, on his own graveside; lets her straddle him like a wild woman of the woods.

She tastes like life, to him, after months in the ground. Months of dancing on the very edges of her soul, of yearning for her—for life. The knowledge that he did nothing to push her, that all he has done is to wait for her to come to him makes every kiss all that much sweeter, makes the earthy moan that she lets escape when he slides inside her all that much perfect.

She comes with his name on her lips, riding him on the cold hard ground like a woman possessed. Peter looks up at her, at the halo of red hair shining in the moonlight, the shadows riding in her eyes even as she digs her nails into his chest hard enough to draw blood. She wants him to fill the howling void inside her and he is more than happy to oblige.

In more ways than one.


End file.
